"Omni" loudspeaker (?)

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All speakers are compromised in one way or another. Trying to make a "good"
speaker that's more or less omnidirectional at all frequencies is even
harder than doing it for a forward-facing speaker.

I remember the Shahinian speakers very well. Mr. Shahinian is a very nice
person, but the earliest models were badly colored. They got better.

There have been laterally "omnidirectional" speakers, such as the Ohm and
that weird German speaker.

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Prototypes only, I guess.
There is one (I don't remember the name, an Italian brand anyway) that made
an omni loudspeaker (an omni cabinet) with two speakers only: one bass and
one tweeter facing upwards toward an upside-down wooden cone. This cone
would spread the high frequencies 360°.... I heard that and it was really
amazing. The only problem in building it is that it was very hard to find a
tweeter big enough...


<genericaudioperson@hotmail.com> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:1119721742.682647.287070@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> has anyone ever built an omni-directional loudspeaker... like some sort
> of 2001 Space Odyssey Monolith, or Led Zepplin's "the object".
>
> Like some sort of spooky looking thing you would put in the center of
> the room.
>

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On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 11:30:59 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
<williams@nwlink.com> wrote:

>All speakers are compromised in one way or another. Trying to make a "good"
>speaker that's more or less omnidirectional at all frequencies is even
>harder than doing it for a forward-facing speaker.
>
>I remember the Shahinian speakers very well. Mr. Shahinian is a very nice
>person, but the earliest models were badly colored. They got better.
>
>There have been laterally "omnidirectional" speakers, such as the Ohm and
>that weird German speaker.

Do you mean MBL? Also add the various Hegeman attempts which aimed
the drivers up into a dispersion device and a few early Ohm speakers.

Kal


>

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On 25 Jun 2005 10:49:02 -0700, genericaudioperson@hotmail.com wrote:

>has anyone ever built an omni-directional loudspeaker... like some sort
>of 2001 Space Odyssey Monolith, or Led Zepplin's "the object".
>
>Like some sort of spooky looking thing you would put in the center of
>the room.

Yes, the Italian guy who made the opera house impulses for the Waves
IR reverb thing had one of these to radiate a snapping sound in all
directions at once. I think it was a 12 sided spherical shape with
identical speakers on each face. They placed mics all around the
venues and captured some kind of file that way. As you suggest, it was
pretty trippy looking, s.

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MBL have built such speakers for many years. Do they look weird enough
to qualify?:

http://www.vxm.com/mbl.html

Curiously, one of the original designers of the petal drivers lives in
the office next door.

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Kalman Rubinson wrote:
>
> Do you mean MBL?


I suspect that is indeed what the OP was thinking of. The MBL 101 E
Radialstrahler Omnidirectional Loudspeaker is one freaky looking
zeppelin-esque monolith. Recent review in The Absolute Sound creamed
all over it..as if that's worth anything.

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<genericaudioperson@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1119721742.682647.287070@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> has anyone ever built an omni-directional loudspeaker... like some sort
> of 2001 Space Odyssey Monolith, or Led Zepplin's "the object".
>
> Like some sort of spooky looking thing you would put in the center of
> the room.

Around 1965 the Empire Loudspeaker company made a speaker called the
"Grenadier"
it was an octagonal vertical pipe, oak or walnut, it was about 3 feet high
and had a 12 or 15 inch woofer that fired down on a plaster cone open 360
degrees, a 2 inch slot at the bottom and a small dynamic tweeter near the
top, firing horizontally at the listener. The tweeter wasn't omni because
you had to keep it directional to preserve the true stereo image. Stereo
was the latest thing in the late 50s Binaural was the latest craze the early
60s you could actually buy stereo LPs "that's vinyl",,,,,Anyway the one I
kluged up was a couple of wood rings glued, screwed, and clamped inside a
15" vitreous china sewer pipe, it did shake the floor, shiny brown clay it
was, weighed about 110 lbs. My mother didn't appreciate the aesthetic of it.
Dave_____________

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

> There is the BOSE 901...

The Bose is not omnidirectional (except at low frequencies, where almost
every speaker is omni).

Many companies have produced omni speakers. In my opinion, it isn't worth
the trouble. Doing it "right" adds to the cost without meaningfully
improving the performance. Unless you like ersatz ambience.

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On 8/13/05 2:07 PM, in article kKGdnRed88jeqmPfRVn-1g@comcast.com, "William
Sommerwerck" <gizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:

>> There is the BOSE 901...
>
> The Bose is not omnidirectional (except at low frequencies, where almost
> every speaker is omni).
>
> Many companies have produced omni speakers. In my opinion, it isn't worth
> the trouble. Doing it "right" adds to the cost without meaningfully
> improving the performance. Unless you like ersatz ambience.

There's also the bipolar planer speakers...
>
>

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

> > The Bose is not omnidirectional (except at low frequencies, where almost
> > every speaker is omni).
>
> The 901, set up the way it was intended
> (8 drivers radiating on ~20deg angle back plates, and one facing straight
> front)
> Is indeed more omni full spectrum than most any other home hifi/stereo
> speaker system.

It's like pregnancy. Either a speaker is omnidirectional, or it is not. The
Bose is not omnidirectional.


> > Many companies have produced omni speakers. In my opinion, it isn't
worth
> > the trouble. Doing it "right" adds to the cost without meaningfully
> > improving the performance. Unless you like ersatz ambience.
>
> Disagree, as does a whole contingent of studio monitor designers and
> engineers who are advocating VERY wide dispersion systems as opposed to
the
> more classic sweet-spot ~60deg or so spread. No it's not OMNI but it's
> trying real hard to be truly hemispherical from one end of a room.

No, very wide dispersion or hemispherical dispersion is NOT omni. So what's
the argument?

Ideally, a speaker should have controlled dispersion, and not spray the
sound all over the room. In practice, tis is almost impossible to achieve.
It's actually easier to get very broad dispersion over a wide range of
frequencies.

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"Edi Zubovic" <edi.zubovic[rem this]@ri.t-com.hr> wrote in
message news:4hutf1lflqh27b7rhl5ad2pd0ckfhlnqi5@4ax.com
> On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 18:35:40 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
> <arnyk@hotpop.com> wrote:
>
>>> <genericaudioperson@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>> news:1119721742.682647.287070@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>>>> has anyone ever built an omni-directional
>>>> loudspeaker... like some sort of 2001 Space Odyssey
>>>> Monolith, or Led Zepplin's "the object".
>>
>> The Ohm A and F speakers weren't omnidirectional, but
>> they were cylindrical radiators which is close. I used
>> to have 3 Ohm Fs.
>>
>
> How did the Ohm F sound? -- I still have a leaflet of
> them somewhere; the construction has been quite
> interesting. As I saw it, they had a large tall composite
> cone divided in three bands, each of its own thickness.

Each with its own material.

The top 1/3 was titanium, the next 1/3 was aluminum, and the
bottom 1/3 was paper.

What the picture did not show was the inside and back of the
cone.

The inside of the cone had a lot of plastic foam about 1/4"
thick glued to it, covering the metal parts of the cone.

There was also some plastic foam glued to the outside back
of the cone.

> Was the woofer in the box?

There was only one driver, only one voice coil, etc.

One downside was that the voice coil was severely thermally
limited (nice way of saying that it tended to burn out but
was protected by a small ultra-quick blow fuse). The speaker
was also inefficient. The practical result was poor
long-term dynamic range. A loud sound for a while could take
it out. It was even more frail than Magnepans.

Not only was the voice coil frail, it was short so it did
not have a lot of linear excursion, and couldn't handle a
lot of bass.

Finally, the whole thing rang like a bell with monumental
comb filtering due to sound running up and down the cone,
both mechanically and acoustically.

Not one of my better ideas.

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"William Sommerwerck" <gizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote in
message newsJadnVhA-5jdu2LfRVn-3A@comcast.com
>> Finally, the whole thing rang like a bell with monumental
>> comb filtering due to sound running up and down the cone,
>> both mechanically and acoustically.
>
> Ironically, that was the principle on which it worked.
> The wave was so supposed to travel down the driver at the
> same rate the sound radiated into the air (that's not the
> right way to say it, but I don't have time to carefully
> think this through), thus generating a coherent
> cylindrival wavefront. The "catch", of course, was that
> there was no easy way to keep the wave from bouncing back
> up the driver.

There were several rows of damping/decoupling slots near the
bottom of the cone.

Not enough, it seems.